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Rechargeable Battery Rack

Lizzy wanted somewhere to keep all the rechargeable batteries her house gets through once she’d charged them. Sick of them getting mixed up and having to recharge them, she asked me to make her something to keep them in. Suuuuuuure a margerine tub or a block of wood with holes would have done the job, but when you have a laser cutter and an itching to play with CAD, why not do both?

I started out by designing it in Alibre. I wanted to cut it from some 3mm white acrylic that we had lying around. To attach the layers of the battery holder together I decided to use Oomlout‘s machine screw method again. It’s so easy to use, and I didn’t fancy messing around with acrylic glue. The job time for the whole lot to be cut was ~12 minutes, with the normal settings I use for 3mm acrylic… power 98/100 and speed 8/400.

Here are the 3 layers and 4 support columns after being laser cut. Once put together it’ll hold 20 AA batteries and 20 AAA batteries.

To put it together one of the holey sheets is laid on the solid sheet. The uprights have two ends, the one with the longer prongs goes into the two sandwiched bottom sheets. A nut is inserted into each slot and a machine screw is inserted from underneath to hold the uprights into the base.

Once all 4 uprights are held into the base the top sheet can be laid on and the same process with the screws repeated. Here are some images of the finished item with and without batteries.

Want one? Leave a comment and I’ll get back to you, I’d be more than happy to cut you one.